FAMILY CENTRES
12 1. Introduction
Mid 2019, there are 222 Family centres (Huizen van het Kind) spread over Flanders and Brussels and with these we reach 294 municipalities in Flanders and the Brussels-Capital Region. Family centres are extensive partnerships between various organisations and local administrations which act as basis provision for everything to do with parenting and growing up. Their common goal is:
“how can we best provide local support to (prospective) families with children?”
2. Kind en Gezin (Child and Family Agency) in the Family centres Kind en Gezin has a three-part assignment with regard to the Family centres:
• It is the regulatory authority and therefore the regulator
• It supports the Family centres via EXPOO (Centre of Expertise for Parenting Support)
• Kind en Gezin participates with its own multidisciplinary teams (including employees of the infant welfare clinic) in the partnerships and we therefore involve our own services
Since 2019 Kind en Gezin, Jongerenwelzijn (the Youth Welfare Agency) and part of the Flemish Agency for Persons with Disabilities (VAPH) fall under the Agency Opgroeien (Growing Up) of the Government of Flanders. This combination gives Opgroeien (the Agency Growing Up) the possibility of achieving greater synergy from the various competences such as preventive family support, child care, child support, foster care, adoption, youth care and tackling juvenile delinquency. As a result of this merger, Kind en Gezin will work closely with Jeugdhulp (Youth Aid), and new perspectives will open up for the Family centres.
3. History
Since 2013, the Family centres have been regulated and supported by the “Decree on the organisation of Preventive Family Support”.
The initial analysis for the Family centres was simple. Many different actors and organisations are committed to supporting families with children and that is in itself an enormous strength. But to what extent is this offer accessible and is it used to the maximum by families? To what degree do we succeed in combining the strengths of the various players and in working in a targeted manner in order to create a coherent range of services for all families? The answer was simple: a central location had to be created, namely the Family centres (Huizen van het Kind). In this way we can combine all these strengths so that measures and support are more coherent and more accessible in order to support families. It is also much handier for families to be able to obtain all information at the same place.
For this purpose, the most important aspect of the service offered by Kind en Gezin was selected and linked and integrated with the other initiatives. Kind en Gezin has a very powerful instrument at its disposal, the infant welfare clinic with home visits and consultations. It is a universal service with a very high reach (97%), which starts with the birth of every child in Flanders. The infant welfare clinic , however, worked too much in isolation and their value could be further optimised. It was high time to use this added value in strong partnerships, so in the Family centres, in order to maximise, for example, the range of services offered.
3 4. Core principles
“How can we best provide local support to (prospective) families with children?” That is the core issue which has to be addressed by those involved in the partnerships. The answer very much depends on the local context. Each Family Centre is different, and yet they show considerable similarities thanks to their common ambitions. The greatest common denominator is the ambition for the Family Centre to act in a partnership as a basic provision for families, where you can go for everything to do with parenting and growing up. This includes a number of issues such as connecting different life areas, developing a differentiated range of services and creating added value with and for families.
Connecting Life Areas
Under the decree, the Family centre must provide at least preventive healthcare (e.g. consultation centres), parenting support and actions to promote social cohesion (i.e. open meeting places).
The life domains with impact on parenting and growing up are, however, much wider than these three pillars in the decree. Mental well-being, child care, prenatal counselling, housing, income, employment, education, culture, sport, etc. have a direct impact on the development of children and families. It is therefore an important challenge to link all these life domains in the Family centres.
A survey at the Family centres reveals that all relevant life domains are present in several Family centres, but that not one single Family centre integrates them all. The degree to which and the way in which the life domains are connected depends, after all, on the local opportunities and challenges and the policy context of the local government.
Differentiated range of services
A survey among parents shows that they want to see three elements in a Family centre; support, meeting and activities. It is the combination of these three elements that can make the Family centres into a living and easily accessible proposal . It is through the activities and meetings that parents and children make the Family centres their own. We are learning from the previous period that the element of meeting is becoming increasingly central in the Family centres.
Creating added value with and for families
Creating a range of services that contains all life domains is not an aim in itself. If the support to families is to be even better, the range must primarily offer added value. A first focal point is to make all those services more accessible. Services for families are currently too fragmented, which impedes the accessibility and visibility of the service provision.
Organisations get to know each other (and each other’s employees) via the Family centres, which allows them to support families in a more targeted way and adapt what is offered to specific needs.
In order to make the services more visible, we make use of one label and one logo for all the Family centres, whereby the private organisations can retain their own profiling in order to demonstrate that they are connected and recognisable. These are essential conditions for a better partnership, but the main challenge for the Family centres is for the various organisations to work in a more focused way. For families do not immediately see family support as something that is divided up across sectors. The degree to which added value can be created depends very much on the participation of the families and children themselves. The commitment to make every effort to shape participation is thus an important condition for recognition and funding.
4 Proportional universalism
Proportional universalism is one of the most important guiding principles for shaping the Family centres. A proportional approach within a universal design means that what people do varies in intensity and scale in function of needs. That ensures that all children and families have access to and can make full use of and enjoy basic provisions customised to their own experience.
Proportionality does justice to the difference and is inclusive. Thanks to the wide partnerships in which there is a mix between what is offered and expertise, the Family centres can, when they work in a more integrated way, give form to this principle.
Family centres Essentials
Objective: to function as a basic service for and with families with children and young people for everything to do with parenting and growing up
Target group: (prospective) families with children and young people, prenatally up to 24 years of age
Total: 222 Family centres are active in 294 of the 300 municipalities in Flanders and the Brussels- Capital Region.
Scope: municipal, inter municipal, intra municipal
Network: partnerships between organisations with family support services and local authorities Physically: a tendency towards combining the range of services into a physical Family centre, generally combined with an infant welfare clinic. The network always extends beyond the physical location.
Range of services: at least parenting support, preventive healthcare and meeting opportunities. Is locally broader in scope, leveraging various life domains: (mental) health, education, employment, housing, income, sport, culture, child care
Tasks: coherently providing the range of services, removing gaps and overlap in that range, alignment of care, working in an integrated manner
Operating principles: proportional universalism, participation
Regulatory framework: “Decree on the organisation of Preventive Family Support”
Competent Agency: Kind en Gezin (Child and Family Agency) from 2019 ‘Opgroeien’ (Growing Up)
